


...and they were sole-mates

by crocustongues



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, implied soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 08:39:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17158799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocustongues/pseuds/crocustongues
Summary: in which Kuroo gets new shoes and it rains. Those two phenomena are fundamentally unrelated.





	...and they were sole-mates

**Author's Note:**

> this was my secret santa fic for spec over on tumblr for the dailyhaikyuu secret santa gift exchange!! hope u like it & i know u asked for soulmate au but i'm terribly sorry but i thought it said soulmates and not soulmate au which is why it's...like this haha i hope u have a lovely holiday season, complete with tidings of comfort and joy! ʚ(´◡`)ɞ

Things Sawamura Daichi bothers to believe in: blue twilights in late December, over-preparedness is a virtue, and extraterrestrial life definitely exists.

Things Sawamura Daichi frankly didn't know he needed to believe in until this moment: bright red shoes at college volleyball practice is _not_ a great idea.

For Context: Kuroo is currently sporting a pair of sports shoes the same shade as the soup Oikawa'd brought with him to their potluck last week, that is to say, artificial and possibly inedible (Daichi'd seen Iwaizumi throw away his portion discreetly and who was he to out his flatmate for a fair and just action?).

The shoes are _loud_ , and they're _distracting_ ; two qualities to never bring into a volleyball court unless they're the traits of a reliable teammate, in which case—good. In this situation, they were _not_. Sure, they were good shoes—they looked comfortable and structurally sound, and they had black laces. It must remind him of Nekoma, Daichi thinks, shaking hands with dawning realisation. 

The problem was - Kuroo looked far too good in them, and every time he ran or jumped or dived, Daichi's eyes would dart to Kuroo's feet and not his hands which, ostensibly, is what you do while playing volleyball.

He was very nearly smacked in the face with the ball. _Twice_.

He's going to ask Kuroo to switch shoes next time because Daichi cannot— _cannot_ —for the life of him concentrate with those shoes on the opposite side of the net. They're _dating_ now, so he wouldn't mind this small favour, right?

Just then, at the end of the set, Kuroo flashes a quick smile his way, and Daichi’s distracted some more, and a cavernous _thing_ inside of him tells him _it’s on_. That’s the first lie in a series of hundreds he’s told himself this evening, because in a fair fight? Daichi’s sure he can take on Kuroo, be it on the court or off. But this is not a fair scenario, and in such circumstances Daichi feels like it’s less like biting off more than he can chew and more like dislocating his lower jaw.

So Daichi does what he does best: he suffers.

————-　✼　————

They’re packed like sardines in the changing rooms, everyone in each other’s space, trying to be done with it and head home to finish assignments, go out for a drink, or study for some-or-the-other test. Such were the limited mercies of college life.

Daichi sighs. He’s still staring at Kuroo’s shoes, neatly lined up against his own plain white ones (that have _Sawamura Daichi_ printed on the soles, all neat strokes and responsibility). It’s ridiculous, he thinks, getting so worked up over a pair of ordinary sports shoes. But then Daichi considers the possibility that it may not be the shoes he’s distracted by, but the person who’s wearing them. He wipes his face with the towel a little too aggressively at that.

Kuroo, who spends much longer in the showers than can be surmised from his appearance, materialises in front of him, hair still damp from the shower, smelling faintly of jasmine. He looks rather nervous and fidgety and Daichi’s just the same.

“Hey, I was wondering--”

Kuroo is interrupted magnificently by their captain, one Nakamura Akihiko, a jovial man of few words. He says those words to them now, and he says them with sincerity. Daichi hopes that some part of him was a captain half as inspiring as Nakamura-san.

“Kuroo, you played well today. Those were some sharp blocks, man.”

Kuroo nods his thanks, perhaps also in slight awe of their captain, like any other rational team member.

“Sawamura, I don’t know what happened with you today, but I hope it was a one-off thing. You’re a solid player, and we need to be able to count on you!”

Daichi stammers out his apologies, and Nakamura-san pats them both on the back before bidding them good night. They both stand there, a little shell-shocked, still unused to receiving such praise from upperclassmen, until thunder rolls like a muffled roar and somebody slips on a bar of soap and yells.

“Kuroo—” Daichi starts.

“Sawamura—” Kuroo says in a similar vein.

They both stop short.

“You first,” Daichi says. There’s nothing worse than starting a conversation with _hey, could you wear different shoes tomorrow, i’m really distracted by them, and by them, I mean you and I would really like to kiss you now—_

Daichi doesn’t like that his thoughts have autonomy. 

Kuroo worries his lip between his teeth. It’s a _thing_ he does when he’s anxious, Daichi knows. He does it studying for an exam the night before, right before a match, and it was the first thing Daichi had noticed before Kuroo had screwed his eyes shut and just told him he liked Daichi approximately two weeks ago.

Funny thing, that habit. 

The universe plays him in other ways, too. For instance, right now:

“I was wondering if you wanted to go to that ramen place by the station.”

“Today? _Now?_ ” Daichi’s brain short-circuits. It’s not that they’ve never gone out together, just the two of them, but there was something rather... _intimate_ about sharing ramen on a greying Saturday evening, colligated through salty broth and hesitantly holding hands.

“Not _now_ , if you don’t want to—”

“I want to!” Daichi assures him rather loudly, and immediately apologises.

————-　✼　————

(Semi Eita, who’s in first-year law, sighs deeply at this exchange from his locker at the back of the changing room. He hopes they fling themselves out of this blushy, embarrassing rut, and just get on with their date. He also makes a mental note to text his boyfriend later that evening.)

————-　✼　————

The list of lies he tells himself grows longer as Daichi walks - hand in hand, mind you - to the station with Kuroo, still somewhat fixated on the red fucking shoes that Kuroo has had the audacity to not change out of.

They sit side by side and wait for their respective bowls of piping hot ramen.

See, it was a messy human calculation on Daichi's part - fraught with fallacies and errors, _sue him_ , he's a literature student, math was never his strong suit - which has now transcended its humanness & is trying its damnedest to take Daichi with it. He’s kind of glad they’re sitting shoulder to shoulder, touching knees and ankles.

Kuroo’s difficult to read, for all his teasing. He’s a practiced secret-keeper. He even eats his mushrooms unremarkably. Daichi hadn’t even known that Kuroo liked him (you know, _like_ liked him) until he’d blurted it out in that funny overthinking way of his. There’s so much Daichi knows now but there’s a whole ocean of what he doesn’t. It scares him a little bit, like the impending waterfall just round the bend, a stomach-drop of feelings away. Daichi never knows what the correct thing to say to him is, so he always reaches out on instinct. Which he does now, and links their pinkies together. White noise envelops them as they eat; cars whizzing past by the dozen, the sizzle of the wok in the kitchen, soft chatter from their fellow patrons all constitute a familiar harmony of an action habitually repeated. There’s a couple of new sounds to take in, too - quick puffs of breath over steaming hot bowls and the pitter-patter of the rain. Daichi takes in as much of whatever he can.

His focus drifts to the red toe of a sneaker sticking out from under the table.

His stomach plummets all the way to the soles of his feet.

“—wamura. _Sawamura!_ You’re not listening are you?” Kuroo stares at him, searching for answers.

“Sorry, I was distracted,” Daichi says, biting into his soft-boiled egg.

And Kuroo teases him about that, predictably.

And then he does an unpredictable thing that Daichi was thinking about--his face softens, inviting him to share what’s on his mind. The corners of his eyes are crinkled with worry, framed by bangs that never seem to stay put. Daichi takes this in, counting to three in his mind, and lets out a breath.

He opens his mouth and all that comes out, very eloquently, is a single word.

“ _Shoes._ ”

Kuroo’s eyebrows shoot up, worry replaced by confusion, thinking that maybe Sawamura Daichi’s finally lost his marbles, finally, after everything, in this tiny ramen shop, the week before winter break.

Daichi, for his part, forgets the need for context and wills his mind to telepathically convey his feelings to Kuroo. Which it doesn’t do, because fate likes taking advantage of the fact that he’s human and needs to use words and actions to communicate with other people around him. It becomes exceedingly difficult with Kuroo around, he notes.

Kuroo looks at their feet, crossed at the ankles, and asks, “Do you...not like my shoes?”

Daichi wonders how he got here, sitting next to a perplexed Kuroo and shakes a metaphorical fist at fate for throwing a wrench in the works, always. He shakes his head vigorously at Kuroo, attempting to explain what he thought of his lovely shoes that were concurrently trying to ruin his life. 

Kuroo understands, and is deeply endeared, despite the _but_ s and _and_ s and _i think_ s, and stops Daichi before he can tangentially throw himself off a cliff and smiles so wide, it threatens to crack his face in two, and tells Daichi to shut up and kiss him.

Daichi’s stunned and he does and he meets a pair of smiling lips, and he wonders what fate thinks, cackling away on a treadmill somewhere to break in her new running shoes, the same colour of the heart he wears on his sleeve, like his life’s some kind of soap opera at the cusp of a plot twist.

It’s a funny thing, liking someone like Kuroo, it feels familiar and foreign, a little bit like he’d eaten too much of Oikawa’s bright green chicken curry, the way his stomach is flip-flopping around. He curls his fingers into Kuroo’s palm as they walk home, not one but two pairs of shoes squelching in tandem up the path that takes them home.

**Author's Note:**

> big thank u to everyone who helped me through it: masha for Being Real with me abt the fic, beewa chan my secret santa partner in crime for the second year in a row thanks for telling me to just go for it and for akihiko, and hope for cheering me up! thank u all i feel god in this chili's tonight
> 
> in the holiday spirit & as the year comes to an end, i'd like to take this opportunity to thank the kurodai fandom, which is full of lovely and awesome people, thank u for ur continued hard work this year & thank u for letting me enjoy myself with u guys & i hope this counts as a small contribution to this community to show i value & frankly adore kuroo & daichi a whole lot more because of u!!


End file.
